BBC officially finds Mideast bias

The BBC has officially reviewed complaints of anti-Israel bias of its Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen, and found him biased. The Telegraph reports:

The BBC Trust's editorial standards committee ruled on complaints about two pieces by Bowen, one online and one on Radio 4's From Our Own Correspondent.

References in the web article to "Zionism's innate instinct to push out the frontier", Israel's "defiance of everyone's interpretation of international law except its own" and Israeli generals' sense they were dealing with "unfinished business" left over from the 1948 war of independence, broke BBC rules on accuracy, the committee said.

The Radio 4 broadcast inaccurately claimed the US considered a particular Israeli settlement to be illegal, but had not breached impartiality rules, the report found.

Bowen used the online article, published on the BBC News website on June 4 2007, to put the present-day Israeli-Palestinian conflict in context by explaining the events of the 1967 Six Day War, but the committee said the subject was very controversial and he should have done more to make clear that there were other views on the matter.

This is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to BBC bias on Israel, but it is refreshing that a review has officially acknowledged it in the instance examined.

Hat tip: James Lewis

The BBC has officially reviewed complaints of anti-Israel bias of its Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen, and found him biased. The Telegraph reports:

The BBC Trust's editorial standards committee ruled on complaints about two pieces by Bowen, one online and one on Radio 4's From Our Own Correspondent.

References in the web article to "Zionism's innate instinct to push out the frontier", Israel's "defiance of everyone's interpretation of international law except its own" and Israeli generals' sense they were dealing with "unfinished business" left over from the 1948 war of independence, broke BBC rules on accuracy, the committee said.

The Radio 4 broadcast inaccurately claimed the US considered a particular Israeli settlement to be illegal, but had not breached impartiality rules, the report found.

Bowen used the online article, published on the BBC News website on June 4 2007, to put the present-day Israeli-Palestinian conflict in context by explaining the events of the 1967 Six Day War, but the committee said the subject was very controversial and he should have done more to make clear that there were other views on the matter.

This is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to BBC bias on Israel, but it is refreshing that a review has officially acknowledged it in the instance examined.